It’s been three months, and I got a survey for my 5th gen 4Runner SR5 2020 last week. It’s one of those checkbox things. I might fill it out. I don’t know. I’d rather share thoughts. I wonder what would happen if I just printed this out and put this in the envelope. At least they’re covering the postage.
I’m not sure if I love my 4Runner. I’m coming from a 2009 Jeep Liberty, after the refresh so it was boxier, and I’m finding the 4Runner to be a lot different from my first impressions in my first test drive and the first month or so of driving it.
(I’m going to be using the word car as a more specific term for what would commonly be a car style vehicle instead of referring to vehicles generically as cars. Likewise, terms like SUV and truck will be used in a more specific manner to differentiate vehicles. I’ll be using the word vehicle a lot, too.)
I was beginning to lean towards getting a car for my next vehicle. I was getting more into cars leading up to the time I found myself in the market for a new vehicle, but I ended up going with an SUV again. But before that, I was watching the Initial D anime which rekindled some of my interest in cars in that category. Another thing that had me leaning towards a car is that I was kind of treating my Liberty as a car towards the end of its life. I got really familiar with it, and I was enjoying the performance, but it was kind of limiting with its size and weight.
Another thing that may have colored my view is that the Liberty kind of shared a platform with a Dodge SUV of the time. I actually didn’t know this until a month or so ago. It also had part time 4WD and RWD when it was turned off. I didn’t even know much about the Dodge brand until earlier this year, but I can see why the setup the Liberty and the Dodge SUV would lend itself towards a Dodge mindset. While it wasn’t super powerful super performance, it still felt powerful to drive.
My 5th gen 4Runner… doesn’t feel powerful on the road. It’s big, heavy, and slow. It doesn’t give me the beans in my belly when I give it the beans with my right foot and my hands on the steering wheel.
In some respects, that’s a good thing. I’m not going to give any excuses for being irresponsible, and I’m not promoting driving recklessly or anything. However, you don’t have to get close to that limit with the 4Runner for it to be apparent that you’re not going to have a good time. I could have more fun with my old Liberty while still being safe. I think that comes down to a few things. Those things aren’t necessarily bad things. They may just be bad for me. I think that’s going to be the conclusion I get to when this is all over, that it’s good, just not good for me.
The 4Runner accelerates poorly. There, I said it. Floor it, don’t floor it, it’s not too different. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems to me that my 4Runner gives me a little bit more when I press on the pedal a bit less from maximum. Max throttle does make the engine louder, but it doesn’t pull any more. Out of every vehicle I’ve ever driven, the 4Runner scores the lowest on the butt dyno.
It’s so heavy, too. I was taking a turn on a road I’ve driven thousands of times last Friday, and I got to this one corner. It’s one of the most engaging corners I drive, and the 4Runner makes it engaging for all the wrong reasons. With the Liberty, it would be slow down, turn in, keep it tight, and pull away powerfully. With the 4Runner, it was like I was trying to drive a shopping cart with an elephant in the baby seat through the corner. It was a lumbering mess. It didn’t feel good at all.
And it’s so big. This actually isn’t something that I totally dislike. It’s a fortress on wheels. Roomy, lots of storage, etc. Even if it’s not a luxury vehicle, there are lots of practical features. Even more so since I’ve got a 2020 with USB charging ports in the back seat, Android Auto, etc. But that size. Its overall size is a bit bigger than my old Liberty. It’s about a foot longer, and it’s got to be a bit wider as well. I was feeling the size more in the early days, but then the pandemic happened, so I haven’t been encountering crowded mall parking lots. I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about it when things get more back to normal and I’m not one of the few vehicles parking in any parking lot I’m in. Maybe I’ll already be used to it by then, maybe I won’t. On the flip side, it’s a lot of mass. It’s more room than I need. I was thinking about getting a car, so I know this is more room than I need. Since it’s so wide and long, it’s a bit much to handle sometimes, even if there aren’t so many other vehicles around. My parking situation at home is a little odd, too, and I wish I had a smaller vehicle to navigate it. Especially if it was a bit more narrow.
Then there’s the steering. Hrm… This is a weird one. This comparison might not make sense to you, but try to imagine. It’s 1994, and Daytona USA just came out in the arcade. The force feedback in the steering wheel is new and powerful. That’s my Liberty. Now, it’s 2002, and the remaining Daytona USA games in the arcade are showing their age. When you turn the steering wheel, there’s no resistance or feedback. That’s closer to what I experience with the 4Runner. It feels like I’m turning nothing at all!
Stupid sexy Flanders!
Another thing that I don’t like is the throttle response. I don’t know what’s to blame. I looked into the Sprint Booster, but I don’t think that’s the direction I want to go. It’s kind of expensive, too. I know the 4th gen V6 paled in comparison to the V8. I actually looked at V8s on Carfax this morning. I think I at least would have been happier with an older V8. Maybe I wouldn’t have been in love with it, but I think I would have been happier.
Even with all of these issues, I still think my 4Runner is a good vehicle. It’s great at what it does. It’s also been proven to be a reliable, durable, dependable vehicle. With all that’s been going on in the world in the past few months, me getting my 4Runner may have been the most responsible thing I could have done. With proper maintenance, it’s not going to let me down. It may not have the best gas mileage, but I won’t have to spend time and money dealing with problems. And if the worst happens, I can put on some off road tires and go off the grid into safety.
But I don’t love it like I loved my Liberty. My Liberty may have been a piece of crap, but it made me happy. My Liberty was a unibody, and my 4Runner has made me realize I don’t care so much about truck style body on frame. Looking back, my mom’s old Chevy Blazer was body on frame, and I didn’t even know it until I looked it up last week out of curiosity. Going from Blazer to Liberty, it didn’t matter to me at all. I didn’t even notice the change in body type. At least for my driving needs, body on frame doesn’t matter one bit.
One thing that does matter more to me is rear wheel drive, or at least a default state of rear wheel drive. I didn’t even know, but wow, rear wheel drive really became a luxury thing since the 80s and 90s. Once they got front wheel drive cheap enough to produce, it became the standard for the proletariat. Somehow I’ve avoided front wheel drive nearly all my life. I drove my dad’s short-lived lemon of a Cherokee with front wheel drive a couple times, and it was so weird. My first car was a 1983 Ford Fairmont with RWD. Then I drove older SUVs, body on frame or unibody, with RWD/4WD and a detour with an 89 or 90 Chevy Caprice Classic when I had to borrow it from my dad. V8 RWD goodness! It was a boat, but it was good!
Actually, I think this is the first time I thought about the Caprice and the 4Runner together, and I think I liked driving the Caprice more.
When I was looking at vehicles earlier this year, I was leaning towards an AWD/RWD default car. Options were limited, though. The big candidates were the Dodges. I began to get more educated on Fiat Chrysler, and my Liberty’s transmission unceremoniously died for the second time, so that struck Dodge off the list. Long story short, cutting out other brands and their cars that I decided against, and the fact that reliability became more important than ever in my decision, I went with the 4Runner. The big reasons I went with the 4Runner was the reliability, in no small part due to it having older technology that was proven dependable, and the fact that other SUVs adopted the cheaper FWD technology which just made me feel like I would have been getting so much less for my money. A side reason was also that it’s becoming harder to get a two seat pickup truck which was something I was considering as an alternative to my interest in cars. However, Toyota stopped offering them a few years ago, and other brands were out of the question due to reliability concerns. Regarding my consideration of getting a two seater pickup truck, the 4Runner also catered to that. Fold down the back seats, and I get the space I wanted without having to get a cap separately which is also something I was going to get.
(As an aside, I wonder if I would have been happy with a two seater pickup truck, too. Smaller pickups that I sometimes still see on the road aren’t really being made anymore, so that’s another thing going against my pickup idea.)
But… the 4Runner is so dull. It doesn’t excite me. Sometimes I get excited about going off road, but then I remember I live in Central New Jersey, and I’ve got to go really far just to go off road. The closest road I know of is the road just south of the safari at Six Flags. It’s a dirt road. I haven’t been there yet, but maybe next weekend. It’s hardly an open place to exercise my freedom or a trail to challenge myself, though. I can see myself being bored of that road real fast. I’m aslo a little concerned about being hit by someone hooning their WRX on the road. I might still be able to drive home while their car would be in serious trouble, but it would still do a number on my 4Runner’s body. Anyway, it feels like the 4Runner is out of its natural habitat here. It will never be happy, and it won’t make me happy to drive it.
I was walking to the mailbox last week. A Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ passed by. It sounded so good. I wanted to drive it. It looked good, even from the back. It wasn’t even going fast. Even after getting my 4Runner, I still looked at cars. I really looked at the 86/BRZ. It’s RWD and not super expensive like a Lexus or a BMW or something. I didn’t even know there was a snow mode in the automatic transmission model. It might not be the fastest, most powerful car, but it’s light and fun. It’s more practical than it might seem, too. A part of me really wants to trade in my 4Runner for an 86/BRZ. The stock tires are too slippery for my taste, but I could get better ones for the summer. I then could get snow tires for the winter. That’s something that I didn’t even know was a thing for the year I had my 83 Fairmont. I spun out in my first snow storm in high school. Driving it in snow after that was always a harrowing experience. I even missed a once in a lifetime concert because I wasn’t confident I’d make it there or back in one piece in the snow that night. It didn’t have snow tires, not that I thought I should have had snow tires. I just didn’t know back then. That incident influenced my 4WD/AWD leanings ever since. If my Liberty didn’t fail when it did, I might have gone with the 86/BRZ. If I only had another month, I could have educated myself on what’s possible with RWD. I was already educating myself on cars again. My Liberty hit the 11 years old mark in January. I was already beginning to look at my next car even though I personally hoped it was still a few years away. I needed a little bit more time.
With things the way they are now, though, trading in a solid, dependable vehicle for something that’s still rather reliable but would be about me enjoying it more than anything else isn’t very responsible. I should be happy that this 4Runner will take me through what might be the next great depression. And it really is a great vehicle that does a lot of things that I appreciate. But the other part of it is that it’s a pandemic, and if the coronavirus does kill me, no matter how unlikely, I don’t think I want my last vehicle and my time spent in it to be something that I don’t love. Finally, even if there wasn’t an economic crisis or a public health crisis, I still think I wouldn’t be happy with it. Like I said pretty early on, I think it’s a great vehicle, but I’m not sure it’s for me.
Decisions, am I right? In any case, I’m kind of stuck with my 4Runner for the foreseeable future anyway. I don’t want to get any other vehicle without test driving it first, and that’s not really possible these days.
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